


the scars it left us

by vapiddreamscape



Series: The Fairytale Project [6]
Category: Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich | The Frog Prince (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Kinder- und Hausmärchen | Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Frog King or Iron Heinrich
Genre: But only a little, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fluff, M/M, Revisionist Fairy Tale, with a bit of Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6430993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vapiddreamscape/pseuds/vapiddreamscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Frog Prince is no longer a frog and reunites with the one he left behind. However, his leaving has consequences he never expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the scars it left us

Bastian has been sitting in silence with his supposed bride since their carriage pulled away from his father's castle nearly an hour ago, his mind nowhere near their confined quarters. Rather, it simultaneously occupied his life a year ago, before he learned what a fly tasted like, and the front of the carriage where Heinrich drives the horses toward his parents' castle. If only there had been a moment for them to steal, but the king had bundled everyone into the carriage and away as soon as it pulled through his gate.

“I will not marry you,” Renata snaps after they pass the hour mark. “I do not care what my father has to say or you for that matter. I would rather live as a peasant than marry a man who was once a frog.”

He almost cries his relief. There was no possible way his family could afford offending the King of Vogelwald by refusing his offer of daughter's hand but the laws of the land and his good conscience could not allow him to take an unwilling bride. “Thank the gods,” he mutters.

“What?! You be crying from the rooftops! I am the fairest maiden of the land. Even the sun marvels upon my face!”

“Beauty is not the only avenue to my heart and another has already trodden one of those paths. My apologies. If you need someone to smooth the situation over with you father, I would be more than happy.”

A loud snapping drowns her shrieks, almost like the sound of part of the wrought ornamentation on the side cracking. “Heinrich! Have we broken something?”

“No, my liege.”

“Then what was it?”

“Nothing, your Highness.”

Bastian tenses at the hesitation in his voice, gripping the edge of his seat until his knuckles whiten. The sound occurs again and he clenches his fingers until he gouges the fabric. “Stop the coach.”

Despite whatever is going on, Heinrich obeys his prince's wish and they slow to a halt. Bastian practically vaults out, despite Renata's attempts to grab at his wrists. He lands with a huff on the narrow path and, with underbrush catching at his traveling cloak, rounds to the front of the carriage.

Heinrich sits there, face white and covered in a sheen of sweat, reins slack in his hands. “Yes, your Highness? Is there something I can do for you?”

“Stop with the titles, Heinrich. If anyone has earned the right to call me by my given name, it is you.”

“I just thought...because of her...” he cocks his head slightly, brown hair falling into his eyes.

Bastian clambers onto the seat and brushes the stray hair out of his eyes. “Nothing has changed. I would never marry her.”

“Why? She is a princess and her father ordered. It is your duty.”

“She is unwilling. Also, there is the matter of this.” He lifts the hem of his shirt. A motley assortment of bruises purple Bastian's right side, scored with a handful of abrasions that shock him with pain every time he moves sharply in a given direction. Heinrich's fingers ghost over the angry marks, and Bastian shudders from the cocktail of contact and pain.

“How?”

“Tends to happen when someone throws you against a wall.”

“What?” he says, starting forward, voice dangerously loud. “What gives her the right?”

When Bastian grabs his forearm, Heinrich stops. “She is but a spoiled child who knew not of what I was and it was that action that made me a man once more. Leave her.”

He leans back against the seat, staring sightlessly at the forest canopy.“I guess we match, in a way. The experience left us both scarred.”

“What do you mean?”

In lieu of a response, Heinrich begins to slowly unbutton his shirt. Bastian sees what he refers to as soon as he opens it and his hand flies up before he can think. Heinrich winces at the touch and he pulls away. Puffy red scars are raised from Heinrich's chest. If Bastian's wounds are angry, his are furious, practically pulsing with the beat of his heart. “Who did this to you? I will have their head before nightfall!”

“Then you will have to take mine.”

“What?”

Heinrich sighs as he fastens his shirt. “When you were cursed, I thought my heart would burst from the pain of it. The only option…”He shakes his head, “I went to a witch and she put three iron bands around my heart to keep it from happening. In case you came back.”

“Of course I was going to come back,” he says, hating the desperation blunting his words. “You had to know that.”

“I did not. Curses do not always break, Bastian. But I had hope and I had to carry on somehow. Without them,” he presses his hand over the wounds, wincing. “It would have killed me. Of that, I was certain.”

Bastian presses his forehead against Heinrich's. “I am so sorry. I never wanted to—“

“It is too late to regret our actions now. We have to move forward. You are back. You are alive and my heart is so full the bands are breaking at last.”

Heinrich closes the few inches that remained between them. The kiss that reunites them isn't anything they haven't shared a thousand times, a brief, dry press of lips but Bastian knows it's the sweetest thing he's ever tasted.

He presses his hand to Heinrich's heart and he feels the last iron band crack beneath it.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my writing tumblr, [The Fairytale Project](http://www.thefairytaleproject.tumblr.com)


End file.
